NIJ Director Dr. John Laub
The Honorable
John H. Laub, Ph.D.
NIJ Director John Laub and his longtime collaborator Robert Sampson of Harvard University are joint recipients of the 2011 Stockholm Prize in Criminology. They received the award for their research showing why and how criminals stop offending.
The Honorable John H. Laub, Ph.D., was nominated by President Barack Obama to be Director of the National Institute of Justice. He was confirmed by the Senate on June 22, 2010.
Before coming to NIJ, Dr. Laub was a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park. He was named a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University for the 2006-2007 academic year. He has also served as a Visiting Scholar in the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University and was the Editor of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology for five years. From 2002 to 2008, he was a member of the Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academies of Science.
Dr. Laub has coauthored two award-winning books: Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life (Harvard University Press, 1993) and Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70 (Harvard University Press, 2003). Both books won awards, including the Albert J. Reiss, Jr, Distinguished Book Award from the American Sociological Association's Crime, Law, and Deviance Section; the Outstanding Book Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences; and the Michael J. Hindelang Book Award from the American Society of Criminology (ASC). In addition, Dr. Laub has authored many research articles in the areas of crime and deviance over the life course, juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice, and the history of criminology.
Dr. Laub was named a fellow of ASC in 1996 and served as ASC's President from 2002 to 2003. In 2005, ASC presented him with its Edwin H. Sutherland Award for outstanding contributions to theory or research in criminology.
Dr. Laub received his B.A. from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in criminal justice from the State University of New York at Albany.
